Kaytranada introduced his new album with a hedge: “This album is strictly for exercises, dancing, and finding out for my individuals who love beats.” However in comparison with the overstuffed visitor star extravaganza Timeless, AIN’T NO DAMN WAY! is a cool breeze of a file at simply 34 minutes, all instrumentals, and just one characteristic credit score. It lays naked the Canadian producer’s preternatural present for making beats that bridge the hole between hip-hop, home, and mainstream EDM, infused with the Haitian rhythms he grew up with. He’s deep within the (consolation) zone right here, sticking to what he does finest: turning unlikely samples into deceptively advanced bangers. It’s the sound of an artist casually strolling into his imperial part, the place even his low-key tracks are sensible, floating just some inches above everybody else.
Put one other manner, AIN’T NO DAMN WAY! is a self-conscious return to Louis Kevin Celestin’s earliest days, when a good Janet Jackson edit set off a series response that led to him opening a complete Madonna tour in 2015. However this file is constructed with the expertise and experience of a decade spent within the FL Studio mines. Each drum hits with objective, the basslines stroll and burrow each which manner, samples and voices are embedded in unusual however intuitive methods. It’s a beat tape that works as pop music for a technology of followers who’ve been conditioned to view instrumental digital music as worthy of their consideration, too, due to distinguished representatives like Celestin himself.
First single “House Invader” comes along with a free and limber confidence hardly ever heard in up to date dance music. At its core is an off-beat swing discovered from artists like J Dilla and different iconoclastic producers. Kaytranada orbits round the whole lot from mid-’80s Prince to peak-era Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis to the skeletal future-funk of the Neptunes, who produced the Kelis tune that “House Invader” samples. However it’s no mere remix. Celestin rearranges the vocals, Burial-style, so that they make a phrase that doesn’t exist within the authentic tune, the which means and feelings twisted into one thing new, and there’s no hint of the unique’s oddball tropical funk. It feels basic in at the very least 4 other ways, nevertheless it’s additionally glittering and trendy, the uncommon instance of an artist getting down to please everybody and possibly succeeding.
AIN’T NO DAMN WAY! is consummately easy, nevertheless it rewards shut studying and detective work. Good issues are taking place beneath the gleaming floor: Simply take heed to how he twists 808 State’s heat acid home basic “Pacific State” into overheated concrete jungle hip-hop full with ’90s G-funk squiggles. It’s virtually unrecognizable, however old-school techno heads can nonetheless clock it. Much more spectacular is his flip of Tangerine Dream’s “Love On a Actual Practice” with “Championships,” a Donuts-calibre edit that turns the German kosmische group inside out with little or no left of its authentic temper or sound. As an alternative, it simply feels like Kaytranada doing slightly Slum Village worship, immediately recognizable as his personal music quite than a Tangerine Dream tune. Talking of Slum Village, there’s additionally the gorgeous “Shine Your Gentle For We,” which reworks a Barry-White-via-Cappadonna pattern right into a beat that worships on the altar of Detroit legend Andrés: feel-good however rickety, pleasure with the barest trace of unhappiness beneath.
